A mage in the making

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Humankind's long flirtation with Technology began with the first crude stone tools and ended with the fusion flames of the Final War. The war lasted five days. At the end of this time, no ruler, government or nation remained to declare itself the victor. Plutonium mushrooms hung over Earth's once-proud cities of steel and glass, turning them into radioactive charnel houses. Hundreds of millions suffered and died in the radioactive ruins, cursing the technocrats who had brought them to the gates of Paradise, only to deny them entrance.

Humanity had overseen the demise of the dodo, the passenger pigeon, the thylacine wolf and many other species. It now faced extinction at the hands of its primary survival attribute: intelligence.

Under the black, awful clouds that coalesced to form a funeral pall over the proud dreams and hopes of mankind, the flame of the human race guttered fitfully, on the brink of final, irrevocable extinction.

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